My homegrown hops are almost ready for harvest. In particular my Northern Brewer plant in its second year is yielding even more cones and is taking over two maple saplings in my neighbors yard. The cones will be ready to pick very soon.

As much as I’d like to brew another batch of Uncommon Harvest, I have a vial of the limited edition White Labs 006 Bedford British Ale that was just released from the White Labs Vault. While thinking of what beer I could use with that yeast and my homegrown Northern Brewer.

Almost forgotten now, Pete’s Wicked Ale was one of the first prominent craft beers in the 1980s and 1990s. The brand was sold and died a slow death before being discontinued in 2011. The beer was a brown ale, a style that could work with the ingredients I want to use. Yes, I wanted to do another beer inspired by a 1990s recipe.  In my mind I thought that Pete’s Wicked Ale was flavored with Northern Brewer hops.

Brew Your Own published a recipe ($) that called for Northern Brewer for bittering and Brewers Gold for the flavor addition. Most of the other clones and descriptions of the beer that I found highlighted that Brewers Gold was the flavor hop.

To confirm this I looked up the old Pete’s Wicked website via the web archive.

It’s not a suprise my memory was off. Incidentally I did buy a Brewer’s Gold plant earlier this year. The plant didn’t really take off until I moved and replanted it in a new spot. With any luck I’ll have some homegrown Brewers Gold next year that I can use in a true clone of Pete’s Wicked Ale. I could also use them for some other historical recipes.

Like many beers, the recipe for Pete’s Wicked Ale may have changed over time. I can’t imagine making a brown ale with only pale and caramel malt. If I were to freestyle a guess, maybe the new owners tried to make the beer lighter in color. Another clone I found in the AHA thread is allegedly the original recipe from Pete. Maybe I will give that recipe a try next year. I am intrigued by the stupid amount of crystal malt.

The plan is to still do a brown ale with my Northern Brewer. One not inspired by Pete’s Wicked Ale, even though I could make a reasonable approximation with Northern Brewer hops. Considering I never tasted the beer before it was discontinued, let alone in it’s hey day, a clone should probably be as close as I can make it.

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A bit late in sharing this, but I had a lot of fun co-hosting the Homebrew Happy Hour postcast with Josh. I will have to send him my definitive guide to seasonal beer.

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When I attempted to recreate the classic recipe for Samuel Adams Summer Ale, I may have come off as the old man yelling at a cloud. With this brew you may think I am doubling down on my malcontentment.

Shoals was typical of New England craft beers 25 years ago. Sad to see it go.

Recently I was disappointed to learn that Smuttynose is discontinuing Shoals Pale Ale. Sadly for me the English-inspired pale ales that helped start the craft beer movement are being hazed out so to speak. Even Goose Island isn’t bottling Honkers Ale anymore. Smutty’s problems were far more pronounced when they decided to pull the plug on Shoals than Boston Beer’s were when it changed the recipe for Sam Summer. I am not going to show up to their previously over-leveraged brewery with a pitchfork, but I am sad to see Shoals go.

When I saw Shoals was going away, I wanted to come up with a recipe that was at least inspired by it, if not an outright clone. Then at a Northshore Brewers meeting, the topic of the club’s 25th anniversary party came up and I was asked if I would brew something for the event.

The club’s anniversary felt like the perfect time to brew an English-inspired ale. When the club was founded in 1994 these were the type of beers that were being brewed at ‘microbreweries’ and brewpubs. Malty and darker ales, or at least beers darker in color than urine, were positioned as an answer to big beer.  Having enjoyed beers brewed by some of the long-time members of the club, I am comfortable saying these were the type of beers brewed in the early days of the club.

Like the best early craft beers made in New England, Old North Shore Ale uses a base of the finest British malts; Muntons Planet Pale, Caramalt 30 (15L), Crystal 150 (60L), and a pinch of Chocolate Malt. “Malt backbone” might be one of the most tired flavor descriptors in beer. Well, this beer is going to have one!

For hops I am using Chinook and Cascade hops grown on the North Shore. Ok Amesbury, which is pretty close to the North Shore. I was given these hops when I bought some second-hand glass carboys. What better hops for a North Shore ale?

Using whole cone hops is itself more traditional, but it does present some challenges that modern hop pellets do not. At the end of the boil, the cones clogged the ball valve on my kettle. I had to siphon most of the wort into the fermenter. As I got toward the bottom of the kettle, I poured the wort through a funnel with a screen, which kept getting clogged. Next time I use whole hops I will be sure to use a bag.

For yeast I am using WLP008 East Coast Ale yeast. It is not as dry and has a touch more character than most American Ale strains. It was easy to repitch some slurry from OG Sam Summer right into my fermenter. The re-pitched yeast took off like a rocket. Krausen formed within three hours, and the temperature was up to 90 degrees. I covered my fermenter with a wet t-shirt, and left it outside overnight. By the next morning the temperature was back under control.

Following another traditional method, after two weeks I racked the beer to a secondary fermenter. I have always thought racking improved clarity of my beers. The WLP008 really doesn’t like to flocculate. With this batch and OG Sam Summer the beer was quite hazy after primary fermentation with a layer of yeast stubbornly floating at the top.  Here is a pic of OG Sam Summer which went from the primary directly to the keg:

Wheat beer is supposed to be hazy. I think this looks sexy.

Old North Shore Ale had a similar haze after primary fermentation. Here is how the beer looks after 10 days in the secondary:

Noticeably clearer and exactly what I was going for.

As a traditional craft beer evocative of a bygone era I wanted the beer to be reasonably clear. The slight haze gives it a characteristic “unfiltered” look. Not only were copper-colored ales novel 25 years ago, unfiltered beer was too.

That time in the secondary really gave the beer needed time to condition. The samples I tasted when racking were very bitter and green. When I tasted the beer again before packaging it had smoothed out considerably. I imagined the beer as pale ale, but it really straddles the line between a pale and amber ale in terms of balance.  It could almost pass as an ESB if the American hop flavor was less pronounced. If I wanted to make this more of a pale ale I could easily dry hop it, but I enjoyed the samples exactly as it was.

At packaging I added some priming sugar to a keg to naturally carbonate the beer. It seemed like another nod to traditional. My keezer was also full.

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Sometimes events unfold independently of each other that all contribute to a singular result. Years ago, when I was still living in an apartment with no yard and brewing on a stove, I received a free propane burner with a purchase from Northern Brewer.

Years later I was using that propane burner at my new home. I let the gas line get a little too close to the flame and the gas line started to melt. I needed a new gas line, but the only place I could get one was from Northern Brewer.

This occurred after I started working for Muntons. I use at least some of our malt in all of my beers, and most of my brews are 100% Muntons Malt. For base malts I keep a bin of our Pale Ale, Pilsner, Maris Otter Pale, Super Pale, and Wheat Malt. I can brew almost any style with these base malts. Notable exceptions are German styles that require Munich or Vienna malts. Muntons makes outstanding Munich and Vienna malts. I will likely pick up a sack of Munich next time I make it to our warehouse.

One style I have always wanted to brew is an authentic Oktoberfest. Also known as Marzen, German for March, the beer was traditionally brewed in March and then lagered over the summer before being served in the fall. When I brewed my Oktoberfest I wanted to brew it in March and lager it in a similar manner as opposed to trying to brew a mock-Oktoberfest as an ale.

Since I needed to buy a replacement gas line from Northern Brewer, I may as well tack on ingredients for an Oktoberfest so my order would qualify for flat rate shipping.  As I put my order together I thought it would be fun to brew my beer with malt extracts Muntons does not currently make. I ordered Northern Brewer’s Munich liquid malt extract and Briess’ Pilsen dry malt extract. Competitive intelligence never hurts!

As I put my recipe together I added some Muntons crystal malt to steep. For hops I used two of my favorite American hops with European ancestry: Northern Brewer and Crystal. Other than the bit of British Crystal, this German lager is pretty American.

The brew day was simple enough. While doing other tasks around the brewery I discovered one of my kegs was leaking beer. I ended up emptying my keezer and giving it a good cleaning. I then kegged two batches I brewed for NHC. For an extract brew day I was pretty flipping busy!

Brewed in March, this was the last lager I was able to squeeze in before the weather started to warm up. I did taste test the beer with my colleague Daniel before putting it into a keg and the consensus was that it is pretty good. The keg is tucked into my keezer, waiting to be force-carbonated until the appropriate time.

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Nice of Boston Beer to so perfectly describe the recipe!

Ten years ago the legendary “Rock of Boston” WBCN went off the air. When it happened it was a bit of a shock to me. Toward the end of its run, I had taken my first cubicle job where I could listen to music at work, and rediscovered the station. ‘BCN felt like it would be around forever. That was what my dad listened to in the car when I would tag along with him to jobs. My uncle Mike grew up on ‘BCN in the ’70s, and stayed with the station all through the ’90s as they continued to play new artists as opposed to growing with their original audience. During my formative years the station played the bands I loved to listen to in high school and college.

Essentially the station changed formats and became a sports radio station. The morning DJs Toucher and Rich stayed on after the format change. I remember at that time Rich Shertenlieb of Toucher and Rich comparing WBCN to a restaurant everyone said they loved, but not enough people went to anymore to keep in business.

Samuel Adams Summer Ale was one of my formative craft beers. Not only was it one of the first craft beers I can remember really loving, I have so many fond memories associated with Sam Summer. As I think about those memories, most of them were in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Since that time there has been an explosion in the number of beers and craft breweries. To say nothing of New England IPA.

In recent years I still enjoyed Sam Summer at Fenway Park, and would make it a point to buy it once or twice over the course of the  ̶s̶p̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ summer. That said, Sam Summer wasn’t the mainstay in my fridge it once was.

I am hardly alone in that regard. Boston Beer has had to grapple with declining sales of its seasonal beers, Sam Summer included. Like the radio executives that took WBCN off the air, Boston Beer couldn’t keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. This year Sam Adams changed the recipe for Summer Ale for the first time in 23 years. The new recipe has a lot more fruit and citrus. The way I read the description, the beer is designed to be more quaffable.

As an avowed capitalist and beer industry professional I completely understand why Boston Beer did what they did. Beer drinkers like me are responsible for Boston Beer feeling the need to do something. That doesn’t mean I was ready to see a beer that meant so much to me go the way of WBCN. I wanted to preserve the classic recipe, or at least brew a beer inspired by the classic recipe I loved so much.

The base beer was an American Wheat Beer, with lemon zest and grains of paradise adding the summery taste. Doing some additional research I found the beer was hopped with the same Hallertau Mittelfrueh as Boston Lager, and was a shockingly low 7 IBUs. The lemon and grains of paradise do most of the heavy lifting in terms of balancing the malt.

I was of two minds for the grist. Muntons Pilsner Malt would have been an excellent choice as the base malt. Knowing Boston Beer uses North American base malt almost exclusively, I decided to use Mapleton Pale malt from Maine Malt House. I visited the malthouse in January, a horrible time to  almost drive toto Canada, and was able to tour the malthouse with the Buck family who owns and operates it. This was a perfect time to use their malt.

Very happy with the crush and had a smooth runoff.

I went with a grist of 2/3 Mapleton Pale and 1/3 Muntons Malted Wheat. I had a beautiful crush and yield with the Maine Malt. I am sure this will be a great base for my beer, and any upcoming brews where I need a North American base malt.

This dehydrated lemon is imported from Spain.

1 oz of hops, one pack of yeast. Those seeds of paradise are also really small and can be tricky to grind

For the lemon, I used dehydrated lemon flesh sourced from Maltwerks, a company we partner with at Muntons. The dehydrated flesh is more potent than dried peel. I used 2/3 oz of dehydrated lemon along with 2 grams of grains of paradise. For my yeast I used a strain I haven’t used in far too long: White Labs 008 East Coast Ale yeast. I have seen this yeast strain referred to as the “Brewer Patriot” yeast. That should work just fine here I think.

I picked a perfect day to brew outside. Even though it would have been faster to brew with my propane burner, I used my electric Mash & Boil for a couple of reasons. There is something to be said for using the same system for each batch to try and gain some consistency. I was also out of propane and am lazy.

As New England IPA becomes almost a monoculture, I find myself wanting to brew the styles and beers that were prevalent in the 1990s and 2000s. Commercial brewers have to brew what sells. As they do that, I feel like the classics are falling by the wayside. Fortunately homebrewers have total freedom to brew the beer we want to drink!

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I have been guilty of this myself. Wake up on a brew day, throw on a brewery-branded Dickie’s work shirt, and commence a five hour brew day or eight hour double brew day. As I have embarked on my journey as a brewer I have adapted practices and applied theories developed in professional brewing in my own brewing.

Now there is equipment made for homebrewers that is basically scaled down versions of professional equipment. There are turnkey brewing systems with pumps, controllers and chillers that wouldn’t look out of place at a nanobrewery. Homebrewers can turn their basements into forests of stainless steel conicals. If you have enough stainless fermenters it only makes sense to hook your fermenters up to a glycol chiller. And to cosplay for your family and friends who may not visit your home brewery, more brewers are buying a can seamer to you can hand out cans of homebrew just like more and more commercial breweries are doing.

There is nothing wrong with any of the above by the way. We all do it for the same reasons: brew better beer! Over the years the quality and consistency of my beer has improved. That is not to say all of the above is necessary to brew great beer and improve as a brewer.

In college my major was sport management. In a sports marketing class one of the concepts discussed was a ladder of fandom. On the bottom wrung might be the person who isn’t a fan of the team or property you are marketing, but might go to an game or event socially. The next step up might be the casual fan who goes to a couple of game a year and watches once in awhile on TV. The idea is the higher up on the ladder, the more loyal and attached that fan is.

Let’s apply that ladder concept to homebrewing. On the bottom rung is probably a beer drinker that is intrigued by the idea of making their own beer. The next step is would be the kit brewer that makes beer kits made with hopped malt extract. When I started brewing I started on the second rung, brewing with un-hopped malt extract and steeped specialty grains. Staying with the concept, the next rung would be extract brewing with a full boil which typically requires a separate burner and wort chiller. Next would be partial mash, then all-grain at the top. The way the hobby has evolved more and more brewers are starting with all-grain brewing, or at least racing to the top of the ladder as fast as they can.

In sports marketing as fans climb the ladder they become more engaged with a team or sport. With homebrewing that distinction isn’t as clear. The homebrewer that climbs the ladder certainly gains knowledge about the brewing process. Armed with the right information they have more control over the beer that they brew. My question is does a longer, more complicated, and often more expensive process make these brewers more engaged?

In a lot of cases the answer is yes. I know plenty of brewers that are brewing new beers all the time. When I see them post on social media they have a new piece of gear in their home brewery. On the flip side, I know plenty of brewers that climbed the ladder, then things changed in their lives like work and family commitments. For them it became more difficult to make time for the five hour plus brew day, or spend money on more shiny equipment.

The innovations that homebrewing has seen in just the seven years I have been brewing have been tremendous. A lot of the high-end equipment I mentioned didn’t exist back then. It does seem to me a lot of the innovation has been geared toward the brewers at the top of the ladder. Innovations geared toward the new brewer like PicoBrew, or new LG system do come with a higher price tag that may be more of a barrier to entry than the $100 starter kit you find at the homebrew shop.

Participation in homebrewing peaked in the early part of the decade and has been slowly declining ever since. Homebrewing is a hobby, and hobbies will naturally have peaks and troughs. In my role with Muntons I do speak with both online and brick and mortar retailers from time to time. People in the industry that I talk to are trying to find ways to get new people into the hobby, and keep more people engaged in the hobby. We as a community and as an industry need to embrace ways to keep the barrier to entry low, and make homebrewing easier for everyone to keep brewers involved.

It’s not good for anyone if a person who is interested in making their own beer looks at what is involved in brewing and decides it’s too much work, too complicated, or too expensive. You can make great beer in 15 minutes with a hopped extract kit. Anyone has time to do that! I couldn’t be happier with how my Rundown Irish Red came out. I made that beer with extract and steeped specialty grains, the same process as my first ever batch.

I made an awesome batch the old-fashioned way!

I once described homebrewing to someone as like making pasta sauce. Extract brewing was like making your sauce with canned tomatoes, then adding your own spices and seasonings, while all-grain brewing was more like making sauce with all fresh tomatoes and vegetables. I don’t know anyone who turns their nose up at a homemade Italian dinner because the tomatoes came out of a can.

I don’t want to sound like I am schilling for beer kits and extract brewing because I work for a beer kit and malt extract manufacturer. Those are just two examples of how you can make great beer at home without playing pro-brewer. I’ve brewed award-winning beers using a brew-in-a-bag all grain and partial mash method. To date my only first place winner was a lager I brewed on my stove-top, and fermented at room temperature. About as easy and low-tech as all-grain brewing can get!

Denny Conn and Brew Beechum are releasing a book entitled Simple Homebrewing. I pre-ordered my copy and look forward to reading it. I think this is an important book and hope it starts a conversation in the community.

Homebrewing doesn’t have to be as complex as commercial brewing, and that’s a good thing! It is easy to forget how simple it can be to make great beer. One of the early credos of this space was the homebrewing can be as involved of a hobby as you want it to be. If the hobby becomes so involving that it eats itself that’s not good for anyone.

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Inspired by Leinenkugel’s Creamy Dark. A smooth dark lager with just enough malt character to be interesting, but still approachable. Blows Negra Modello out of the water for me. I entered the beer into NHC, let’s see how it does!

This was a bit of a re-brew. Last time I tried to brew a partial-mash version of this beer, the batch was infected and I had to dump it.

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Time goes by so fast. You only wanna do what you think is right. You know what doesn’t feel right? That I haven’t brewed either of my house Irish beers in a very long time. As I have started to circle back, I contemplated re-brewing my Spring Training Stout or Rundown Irish Red.

My other impetus for brewing these beers again is the fact that these style of beers are not as prevalent as they once were. At least not as prevalent in the portfolios of American craft brewers. Gentile Brewing in my hometown is an exception as they brew a year-round stout and seasonal Irish red.  Nowadays many craft stouts have some kind of adjunct like coffee, chocolate, vanilla, spices, and most are imperial in strength.

A subtle, slightly malty style like Irish Red couldn’t be more different than say New England IPA. That doesn’t give craft brewers impetus to brew them. Several examples are made with American malt. In a malt-driven style like this using authentic ingredients is critical. I’ve bought “Irish Red” ales that tasted like under-hopped American Amber Ales.

As I drink less these days, I didn’t have room to put two Irish beers on tap. On tap right now I have Employee Orientation 102, the second runnings of a training beer I made with a colleague, and a re-brew of a dark lager Pulpwood Stacker. If I could only brew one, the Irish Red made the most sense.

I kicked the batch further old-school by brewing the beer with malt extract. Two cans of Muntons Maris Otter Pale extract to be exact with some steeped specialty grains. I brewed this batch the same day I brewed Thomas Brady’s Ale. To heat my water for steeping my specialty grains I used the first gallon of water to come out of my immersion chiller as I started to chill my first batch. The water was piping hot and seemed to do the job just fine in terms of extracting flavor and color from my grains.

Who needs a muslin bag?

From there I strained my specialty specialty grains and collected the wort in my Mash & Boil, topped off with more water, heated up the wort to near boiling temperature, and cut the heat before adding my malt extract. The idea is to not scorch the kettle or the extract. Also, the Mash & Boil has a breaker that shuts off if the water is too low to stop the unit from heating up when it’s dry. I made sure my liquid extract was fully dissolved before powering back up to get to a boil.

The same thing as using Maris Otter out of the sack, except I let my colleagues in Stowmarket do the mashing for me.

Every time I brew with malt extract I ask myself why I don’t do it more often. Are there limitations that come with extract brewing? Yes, but every brewer has limitations of some kind. I visited a large brewery that had only just opened. The brewers stared at monitors like Homer Simpson at the nuclear power plant as almost everything in this state-of-the-art brewery was hard piped. Even touring that facility, the brewer lamented a couple bits and bobs he wished they had done differently that they had to work around.

Usually as soon as I am done brewing, my mind immediately shifts to thinking what I will brew next. Enjoying the beer is almost an afterthought. For some reason I am particularly excited to enjoy this batch. I think I am excited to enjoy a beer made with such relative simplicity. A beer where the base was malt extract, the proportion of specialty malt was small, the flavor is designed to be subtle, and the balance makes the beer crushable.

The beer is already in the keg. Pints will be enjoyed on Saint Patrick’s Day!

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It’s been two years since I brewed the first batch of Thomas Brady’s Ale. Originally I had intended to brew the beer on an annual basis. Unfortunately last year I was busy settling into a new house and new job, and just never got around to it.

The idea for the beer came from my friend Eamon. Every New Years Day he brews his barleywine, ages it over the course of the year, bottles it in the fall, and opens the first bottle on New Years Eve. I brewed my batch a few days after New Years.

Brewing on a stove-top, I made my first barleywine with an obscene amount of malt extract. Now that I have both a yard to brew in where I can use my propane burner, and my Mash & Boil that is capable of a full volume boil. That makes brewing an all-grain barleywine with a grist of over 20 pounds of grain far more practical. The bones of this all-grain recipe are very similar to the original extract version.

The last label from my last sack of Propino Pale Malt.

For the last several years at Muntons our main spring barley variety has been Propino. Before I worked for the company, the North Shore Brewers had our SMaSH base malt project where members brewed beers with different base malts as a way to evaluate them. In hindsight it was fortuitous that for my SMaSH blonde the “UK 2-row” I used was Propino. Out of all the SMaSH beers brewed, I liked the one I brewed with Propino the best.

New barley varieties are developed every few years as growers seek greater yields in the field and disease resistance. In East Anglia, where Muntons sources most of its barley, Propino is on its way out and Planet is on it’s way in. My craft beer customers have all switched over to Planet, as I was down to about 14 pounds of Propino. Using the last of my Propino in a special beer like Thomas Brady’s Ale that will be cellared for years felt an appropriate swan song.

When I decided to brew this year’s vintage as an all-grain beer, I revisited the recipe Pattinson published on his website:

It is interesting that the grist uses both pale and lager malt. English pale malt is relatively low in diastatic power. My educated guess is that the lager malt was added to help convert the un-malted wheat in the grist. Most American brewers are not familiar with lager malt, and most homebrew shops don’t sell it. Lager malt is light in color like Pilsner malt, but usually doesn’t have the same honey-like sweetness.

As I slowly work through a sack of wheat malt, I used wheat malt in my recipe. This makes diastatic power not a concern. Considering I didn’t have any lager malt this was a good thing. I still didn’t have quite enough Propino Pale Malt to replace all of the lager malt in the original recipe. As a substitute I used Muntons Super Pale Malt.

Super Pale is an awesome malt. It is the lightest colored malt Muntons makes; lighter than even its Pilsner and Lager Malts. The bag I have at home is 1.3L in color. Super Pale was designed for hoppy beers, and in this recipe will allow most of the base malt flavor to come from the Propino Pale.

The specialty malt in the 2017 vintage was a caramel rye malt, and I aged the beer on oak cubes soaked in rye whiskey. As I thought of which spirit I would use for this batch the choice that immediately came to mind was a bourbon made by one of my customers. This bourbon uses a small amount of Muntons Crystal 400 which is 150L. Since the malt is in the spirit it was natural to use it in the beer.

This was the second batch in a row where my yield was exceedingly poor. The last batch was a re-brew of Crackerjack Cream Ale I intended to enter into NHC.

My starting gravity going into the fermenter was 1.080, barely enough for the beer to be a barleywine. When my pre-boil gravity was off, I disassembled my mill as I waited for my wort to reach a boil. I found a barley kernel that may have been causing one of the rollers to jam. I cleared that out, gave the mill an overdue brushing, and reset the gap to the factory default position. Hopefully things will be back to normal during my next all-grain batch.

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I really think video is a better medium for sharing tasting notes. I have never done a great job at posting tasting notes blogs anyway.

As far as the quality of the videos I think they are getting better. This is the first one I shot in landscape! I’ll see what I can do about the lighting. Wait till the end to see what the hum in the background is.

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